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I had an article go live on my Home and School Mosaics magazine on Dec. 29. Well, I was still on Christmas break, so I couldn’t post it. Today, it is back to work, so it is my first task of the day to post this article. Getting back to work after the break isn’t easy, but I hope you enjoy my article about babies learning ASL making your first days back to a normal a little better. It seems many parents teach their babies ASL signs as well as Spanish or French numbers, colors, and basic words. I recently saw another story about a celebrity teaching her child ASL starting shortly after birth. It seems to be the thing to do. I got confused, though, when I met or consulted online with hearing parents with Deaf or DeafBlind children who were now afraid to teach their child ASL. The reasons were varied. I wanted to know if the reasons were valid or based on fear, so I did some research. This post is about what I learned and now want to recommend to all parents. Let me know what you think.
Don’t Throw Out the Baby with ASL
http://homeschoolmosaics.com/dont-throw-out-the-baby-with-asl/
Renée K. Walker—Foreign Languages—Winter 2010/11
American Sign Language
By Renée K. Walker
Foreign language credit for high schoolers can be a nightmare for many homeschooling parents and students. Many public and private school students feel they are lucky when their state does not require it for high school graduation. Homeschoolers also often try to avoid it, but many find that colleges will not accept students without it. However, foreign language should not be overlooked as an essential part of a child’s curriculum. Like art and music instruction, foreign language study enhances intellectual growth in the student. It can also improve public speaking skills and self-confidence.
Foreign language instruction isn’t complicated if you shop around for the best curriculum to suit your needs. The biggest decision you have to make is the first one, though: Which language do you want your students to learn? While there are many, in the homeschool world most choose French, Spanish, German, or Latin. There is another choice that many overlook, but it has a great potential to do good in the community around you.
Why Study American Sign Language?
As the third most-used language in the United States, accepted as a true language by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1989, and acceptable for study in most public and secondary schools for foreign language credit, American Sign Language (ASL) is an excellent choice for study. Some foreign language teachers question the validity of ASL as a true language, but linguistics experts do not question it, because it has its own system of grammar and syntax and is constantly changing as it grows within its culture and community of speakers. ASL is now accepted in most states for foreign language credit for high school graduation, and most colleges recognize it as well. Many colleges are even beginning to offer ASL instruction, with more and more offering interpreting programs in order to help address the certified interpreter shortage across the country.
High schoolers and families learning ASL have the potential of bringing light into a dim world for many Deaf people, especially DeafBlind people. You and your students’ lives can be enriched by the love and support of the Deaf community, which is indeed a culture of its own.
The study of ASL cannot be carried out successfully without a study of the culture and its history. Deaf and DeafBlind people are at a disadvantage in the hearing and sighted world. Communication issues prevent full access to many of life’s activities that most of society need and enjoy. If more people in the hearing world would take the time to learn ASL, a bridge could be built that would allow three cultural groups to meet, and new and exciting relationships could be developed. A Deaf person could easily ask a salesperson for help in the department store or order a meal at the restaurant or merely chat with a hearing person in the long line at the grocery store. A DeafBlind person could more easily find an assistant to help her write out bills or call a repairman to fix a broken window or simply have a visitor to share the afternoon with, dispelling the boredom for a while. Anything you can do in communicating with the Deaf or DeafBlind will be such a joy to a person who is sidelined from the hearing world due to communication issues.
If you find that you truly love American Sign Language and the Deaf culture, consider becoming a certified interpreter. There is a shortage of interpreters across the country. Trained interpreters are needed to help Deaf and DeafBlind people thoroughly understand what is happening in legal and medical situations. Their health or legal status could be in danger if they do not fully understand what is happening in those situations. Mastery of ASL is also a key to careers in Deaf Education and DeafBlind Studies. Learning ASL has the potential to help in so many ways, and no matter how big or small, the help is so very needed and appreciated.
Resources
If the question now is, “Okay, I want to teach ASL, but how can I go about teaching a language that is so different?” the help is out there, and finding it is easy. Many colleges and area agencies for the Deaf offer fairly inexpensive community classes, which are excellent choices. There are free options as well. The best free options are found on the Internet. The website http://www.lifeprint.com, created and operated by Dr. Bill Vicars, a Deaf ASL native and certified ASL teacher, is highly recommended by many Deaf agencies and by the Helen Keller National Center For Deaf-Blind Youths and Adults. You also can register with Lifeprint and submit lesson work and videotapes that are accepted for full credit in many places.
Numerous print resources are available for the study of American Sign Language and Deaf culture. A curriculum that gives a thorough study of vocabulary, grammar, and syntax is a series titled American Sign Language Green Books by Dennis Cokely and Charlotte Baker-Shenk. This series is published by Gallaudet University Press, a division of the first school for the Deaf and Deaf College, Gallaudet University. The Everything Sign Language Book: American Sign Language Made Easy by Irene Duke is a good choice for finding a lot of information in one place. The American Sign Language Phrase Book by Lou Fant, The American Sign Language Handshape Dictionary with optional flash card sets, and The Gallaudet Dictionary of American Sign Language are excellent resources, all of which can be purchased at http://www.amazon.com.
Find and use a chart of the American Manual Alphabet for fingerspelling. Twenty-six handshapes correspond to each letter of the alphabet. The Manual Alphabet is used in only a limited fashion in ASL, but fingerspelling and the handshapes play important roles. The Lifeprint website offers an alphabet chart, and most ASL resources will include one.
Regardless of the particular American Sign Language curriculum you choose, find a mentor—an interpreter, ASL teacher, fluent signer, or native speaker, who can make sure you are learning the signs properly and using them correctly. It is difficult to learn a sign using only a picture or even a video presentation. If possible, find a mentor in the Deaf community. He or she will help you not only to properly apply the skills learned in the curriculum, but also to enrich your vocabulary. You can form lasting bonds that not only will enrich the class but will enrich your lives as well.
A Few Considerations
Before you begin your study of American Sign Language, there are a few things that need to be considered. Many hearing individuals have the misconception that ASL is an easy or a simple language. That is probably derived from a misunderstanding of how the grammar and syntax works or from a direct translation that sounds similar to baby talk, but isn’t. ASL is a rich visual language that actually paints pictures with more detail than any verbal language does. The grammar and syntax is more like Japanese or Navajo than English. Learning any foreign language can be a challenging task, and learning American Sign Language is no exception. Consider this when choosing the language of study for your student.
Another aspect to consider is that some students who may have been overlooked for foreign language study due to learning disabilities, autism spectrum disorders, or auditory /visual processing disorders may be capable of learning and actually benefiting from acquisition of a visual language rather than a verbal one. Also, many hearing people think that any form of communication done with signs is sign language or ASL. However, many modes of communication use the hands to facilitate interaction and teaching of English to the Deaf. Signed Exact English (SEE) is one in which every English word is signed. It uses ASL signs and SEE signs, i.e., signs made to cover signs not found in ASL, because ASL doesn’t use the same syntax as English.
Pidgin Signed English, also known as Contact Language, is another tool that is used to bridge the gap between the hearing and the Deaf. It uses mostly American Sign Language signs, but in English word order. It is similar to ASL in that you don’t sign the forms of “be” or every single word.
All of these approaches are ways to communicate with the Deaf and may be beneficial if communication is the motivation or if used as a bridge to teach English skills to the Deaf. However, these approaches are not foreign languages, because they do not have a syntax or grammatical system of their own. They merely represent English words formed with the hands in a visual manner. For this reason, study of these approaches does not qualify for foreign language credit at the high school or college level.
When you choose a curriculum, ASL must be listed as the language of study. A listing of “sign language” is not enough to identify the subject as American Sign Language. Finally, ASL study must include a study of its history and culture of the Deaf community. In no other language have the creation and evolution of a language been so obviously impacted by the history and culture of its speakers as with ASL. Your study will enhance your understanding not only of the language but of the lives of members of the Deaf community as well. Their struggles and progress have united them uniquely as a community.
With all this good information from reputable sources, there are no excuses to not learn American Sign Language, a tremendous skill that can be acquired and enjoyed by you and your students. Do yourself a favor and after checking with your colleges of interest and/or your state requirements regarding foreign language credit, seriously consider American Sign Language for your students’ foreign language credit. The choice can bring joy to your family and the life of many Deaf and DeafBlind people.
First published by The Old SchoolHouse Magazine, Winter 2010/11.
A love of reading is the second best gift you can give your child. The first best gift a child can receive is the love and salvation of Christ, of course. A love of reading can open a child to God first and life. I was recently sent a print book called Read for the Heart: Whole Books for Wholehearted Families by Sarah Clarkson to review which highlights the importance of loving to read and how to pass it along.
Ms. Clarkson’s love for reading is obvious and contagious as she lovingly describes her childhood with books. Ms. Clarkson initially shares some of those memories with us showing us how much a childhood of sharing books with your child can impact their lives and future so positively. Then in detail, she shares how the reader can begin that journey as well by giving examples from her parents’ teaching of her and her siblings. The sharing the love of reading comes alive through her examples and it is easy to catch the excitement and passion to pass it along.
In the last section of the book, Sarah Clarkson describes the various genres of literature from a children’s book perspective. She lists and describes excellent examples by author of each genre suggesting proper age groups. When she felt it appropriate, she also listed cautions of which the reader needs to be aware. The lists are not exhaustive, of course, but they are a good starting point for helping you pass along the love of reading.
Read for the Heart: Whole Books for Wholehearted Families by Sarah Clarkson is an excellent reference book for your homeschool library. It can be purchased for $17.00. Let it ignite a passion for reading in you and then pass it along to your children.
To find out more and find out about this and other books available from Apologia’s Whole Heart division, go to www.wholeheart.org.
Though I was provided samples of the product to do this review, I was not compensated in any other way. The opinion expressed here is entirely my own.
SAT ® and ACT® preparation is on anyone’s mind if they plan to go to college. Most of our curriculums will help prepare you for the writing, verbal, and math portions, but one section tends to stump a lot of us, and that is vocabulary. Where do they come up with some of those words? Finding a good resource that is interesting is the key. If you are blind or deafblind, the resources are very limited, as well. VocabAhead may just be the choice for you and your students with its “entertaining and effortless vocabulary building solution”.
VocabAhead’s SAT Vocabulary: Cartoons, Videos, and MP3s is a simple, but handy study aid for any trying to bone up on their vocabulary. The main product of this company is a book. I will describe it first for those blind and deafblind with some residual sight for use with a CCTV. Each page covers one word. The page lists the correct spelling of the word and its part of speech. It then lists the definition along with a humorous cartoon illustrating the word’s meaning. The cartoon has two to three different sentences describing the cartoon using the word or using the word appropriately in additional example sentences. The page concludes with a short list of synonyms and antonyms for the word. There are 30 units which group words in loose categories of similarity. At the end of the unit, a review exercise is provided of matching and fill-in-the blank practice of the words in that unit. Answers are included in the back of the book. This is a great way to build visual connections to easily learn and reinforce that learning.
Visual learning is not the only style supported by this little aid. You can download the narrations of each page on MP3 files to your favorite player and listen and learn on-the-go. This is great for blind and auditory learners and those with reading difficulties and dyslexia. There are also videos to download that will allow you to take the book with you in a digital fashion on your IPod, IPhone, and IPad which for some students with special needs is a great plus. The narrations of the videos are not closed captioned, but the deaf will find it useful as the book is if they prefer apps for learning. Some autistics are learning to use the IDevices to spur their learning and reinforce their memory and attention spans. The audio files and the videos are free for download of their website. I also hope the team will add a feature. That is a pronunciation guide for the word. Some students need that visual key to help them with learning to pronounce words. Regardless, this is a perfectly priced study aid for vocabulary improvement.
I must add a caution to parents and to adults who are wary of the content they put into their minds. There are some cartoon and sentence examples that some may consider inappropriate for some readers. One sentence for anathema describes a girl using voo-doo to put a curse on her boyfriend. A cartoon for the word carnal shows a busty woman. Each parent or adult needs to decide if the material presented is suitable for their student’s use or even their own. This reviewer would never ask you to present material for use that you feel is inappropriate. I make note of these possible things when I can to help you make an informed decision about the product.
To my great surprise, I found on their website that an IPhone/IPod app is available for this study aid. Being Deaf and Blind, I was happy to see a lite or free version available for testing. That means this review will also go on my DeafBlind Hope blog to help DeafBlind people know what can help them. To add to my excitement, I found they did a great job making the app accessible to braille output for the most part. Everything in the “Study Words” section works fine with braille. The flash cards work well too except for the tap to hint section which can be selected on a braille display, but because the hint is only an image, the braille display goes blank. This would definitely confuse a person needing the braille. They might not know what to do next or think the program closed or locked up. I suggest that they add a text hint here such as a synonym or a sentence using the word or a text description of the image that would help with the word. In the quiz section, the main page is accessible. The buttons work and even the dial a word section which is more of a graphic is accessible. You can scroll through the list to see which words will be on the list and change the list from the “don’t know yet” list and the “mastered” list for continued practice on all the words. Once you click the start quiz button and change to the first word on the test, the app loses it on accessibility. The home and back button work fine. You also can see which word you are being quizzed on next, but the multiple check boxes of possible definition answers only shows on the braille display as “btn” which means button. You cannot read what the choice is at all. You can check with the select button on the display, but you don’t get any response as to right or wrong as you should. You only get the text “dmd btn” which is demand button. I also couldn’t figure out how to move forward in the quiz by braille display either. You do a one finger flick on the touch screen. That isn’t always easily understood by people who are totally deaf and blind, so a next button should be added. These are easy fixes for the app developers, though. I am hopeful that this will be updated soon because I am sure the developers would like to make their app fully accessible. I am going to email them with my suggestions as their app boldly asks for which is a positive point for the developers. They obviously want to get suggestions for improvement. When it is, I can tell you that the app will be worth buying even at $9.99 if you are blind or deafblind because it covers 1000 words. It is already a great app for other users including some special needs students.
Between the book, the audio files, the video files, and the IPhone/IPod app, VocabAhead SAT Vocabulary: Cartoons, Videos, and MP3s should have everyone covered. To find out more, go to http://vocabahead.com. This neat study aid can also be purchased easily at Amazon.com for $12.95 in book form. A DVD version is also available for $24.99. This could be a fun way to a higher SAT® or ACT® score or just to get a little smarter.
I was provided a free product to write this review. I was not compensated in any other way. The opinion expressed here is entirely my own.
Measurement is a necessary skill that we use in our daily lives. Many children struggle to learn the concepts length, weight, distance, etc. The ruler is one of the first tools we teach when beginning to develop measurement skills. A student might grasp the idea of a foot and 12 inches as the same because it is something they can see and touch with our standard ruler. Try to break that down to smaller increments, and you quickly lose many of the students. Master Innovations has designed a system of rulers to help better teach that task with their Master Ruler.
The Master Ruler is designed as one rule with several parts that lay over each other, but transparent to see the addition of smaller increments within the large increment at the base. The ruler comes in Standard English and Metric increments available separately. The idea is to show that the smaller increments are still measuring the exact same amount of space, but breaking the space up into different size parts or increments. We have all seen similar techniques used with fractions and fraction pies. The white base ruler simply has 12 red lines dividing the space into 12 equal parts each 1 inch. A second, but transparent ruler is laid over the base ruler that has 24 blue lines dividing it into ½ inch increments. Each line that matches an inch marker below is a little heavier. The red line of the base ruler marking each inch is a little longer than the blue lines to help reinforce the concept that the space is equal regardless of the number of increments. There are three additional transparent rulers that can be place on top of the rulers below to correspond with ¼ inch, 1/8 inch, and 1/16 inch increments each with a different color-coding. The lines of each of the rulers are sized so that all of the increments can be seen clearly even through the last layer of 1/16 inch increments. The white base ruler also has a conversion chart on the back for many of the mostly commonly used facts that every student needs to know as second nature. Having them handy will help them to memorize these facts easily. The metrics ruler is essentially the same, but uses metric increments. With practice using The Master Ruler, the student can begin to visualize the concepts of basic measurements and use them successfully.
Many special needs students will find the system great for helping them understand the concepts. The color-coding is great for may learning disabled and ADD/ADHD students as well as the overlay system to emphasize the fact that the unit space or distance is the same, but the number of sections it is broken down into is what changes. Of course, it fits very well for students are more kinesthetic or hands-on learners. The system of color-coding and overlay also works with low vision students, too, without too much difficulty. There are some tactile paint and bumps that can help some, too, but as is, the totally blind might have too much difficulty. A workbook available separately has activities that will help you introduce the use of the rulers, too. However, though many of the pictures used for measuring are fine, there are some that are blurry and would definitely be difficult for a low vision student to use. The company will probably address this issue in future versions. Overall, though, the system is very beneficial for most special needs issues.
The products are also very durable as well as affordable at $9.95 each. The workbook, full of activities, is $15.95, and a teacher’s ruler that is suitable for demonstrations and overhead use, too. You can also purchase a Starter Set for $41.25 for a $4.55 savings. Master Innovations also has other affordable systems available great for learning other math concepts with their Master Clocks, Master, Angles, and Master Fractions. Go to http://www.themasterruler.com for more information.
Though I received a free product to write this review, I was not compensated in any other way. The opinion expressed is entirely my own.